William Gill

Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to surprise and delight them. Two great examples of this have stood out to me in the last week. Amazon.com I’m a shockingly frequent Amazon shopper. There are so many things that I used to go to the shopping centre for that I now order from the…

I was thinking recently about the relationship between UX experts and Product Managers, which got me to thinking about what a good product manager is – especially in the world of web products. I think a good product manager needs to understand the whole scope of his or her product. In the world of web…

The beauty of Google’s search algorithm is that it lets you find what you’re looking for, and it gets better all the time. Because Google is one of the most important ways to ‘get found’ on the web, a whole industry has arisen around how to “beat” the Google search algorithm: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)…

A discussion came up today on one of Nokia’s internal social discussion forums about how Product Managers should interact with User Experience designers. I was shocked to read that quite often not only do the Product Manager and UX Designer not really work together, but they don’t get along well at all. This is, to…

5 product management lessons from the MacBook Air: push the boundaries, release early, take risks, learn from usage, and fail early and often.

If you chase two rabbits, both will escape. You can’t run in two directions at once, and you have no way of controlling where the rabbits are going to run next. You can maybe influence the rabbits by setting up boundaries; you can maybe predict the rabbits by knowing the terrain, but you can never…

In 1989 Toyota launched a brand new series of luxury cars designed to compete with the likes of Mercedes Benz and BMW. After 9 years and over a billion dollars in investment, the first Lexus vehicle, the LS 400, was launched. Three months later, two owners contacted Lexus to complain about an overheated brake light…

I’ve had an iPad for a few months now, but only recently I started using it to read eBooks. Although for me an electronic device will never replace the texture of paper and the smell of the freshly pressed ink, using the iPad to read books is a delightful experience. I enjoyed it from the…

Do you ever feel like you’re rushing from one thing to the next, without really doing any one thing properly? Are you running from one social appointment to the next without taking the time and attention to enjoy each one? Is your desk like a constant fireworks show of new emails, instant messages, phone calls…

I came across this very old article about personalisation of websites from 1998: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/981004.html The article discusses the fad of website personalisation that was sweeping the web back in the late 90’s. Back then, many websites were making the first efforts to personalise the web by giving complex personalisation options to users, through which the website…

If you’re not happy at work, I think you have two choices. You can either: take an active role in making things better, or leave. Everyone has the right to improve their own situation. If you see problems or difficulties at work, you can raise your voice and help find constructive solutions. But if you’re…

Most software projects have a deadline of some kind, and only the very lucky few don’t have a budget. In this landscape that leaves two things you can compromise on: features, or quality. The temptation is always there to try for as many features as you can. Rush to cram them in. Squeeze, push. Race…

I got an email the other day, adressed to me with a mailing list of all the other Product Managers from our site in cc, that started with the words: “Actually, that’s completely wrong.” It was referring to my previous mail to a small group where I had made a comment about the readiness of…

Last week I wrote about impediments, and making sure you go through them every day at the daily scrum standup. As I was discussing blockers with my team over the past week I noticed (again) that most of these impediments are recurring… they seem to crop up nearly every sprint. Scrum teaches us about the…

In an environment where so many people avoid decisions, shy away from responsibility and avoid asking hard questions, the people who do this well stand out. Shake a few trees. Take a risk and raise a tough issue. What’s really stopping you? What are you afraid of? Politics? Don’t want to make an enemy? The…

The daily scrum standup is about answering three very simple questions: What did you do yesterday? What are you going to do today? Do you have any blockers? All three questions are important, but you know what… this is another great case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s the…

Scrum won’t solve all your development problems. Even if you implement 100% of the Scrum textbook (and most companies don’t), it won’t fix a broken development environment overnight. Scrum process just helps to bring your problems to the surface so you can see them and deal with them. It’s all about exposing problems and issues…

Despite what is often the case in software organisations, a Product Owner is not a Scrum Master. To me, the two roles are both absolutely critical to the success of a scrum team, but they are not only very different, but quite often contradictory. The Scrum Master protects the team from interruptions and blockers and…

Sometimes you have to choose between two or more bad options. Often the perfect choice is a luxury that you can’t afford. The question is how you respond to this choice, and how you communicate it to your team. I believe you have two options: You can act purely as a messenger, or You can…

Welcome to my blog.  My name is Will. I grew up on the east coast of Australia, studied and started my career in Sydney, and 2 years ago I followed my girl and my heart to Berlin, Germany. I now work for Nokia. I am the Product Owner of Nokia’s web social location platform, maps.ovi.com. …